Drinking water price goes up 15% to 20%

THE price of drinking water sold in 19 litre plastic bottles has risen by “15 to 20 per cent” the owner of a bottled water company said.

Hasan Küçük, director of Hediyem Su, confirmed the price hikes for the popular “damacan” (demijohn) refillable bottles, stating that the reasons are the raw material prices and the depreciation of the Turkish lira against major foreign currencies.

Mr Küçük argued that exchange rates need to be “fixed in order to solve this problem” and government officials should add an article to the economic protocol signed with Turkey earlier this year to cover the exchange rate difference on Turkish imports for companies in the TRNC.

Mr Küçük stated that the public, the government and the business world will benefit from this.

“Our most important input cost comes from the products we import,” he said. “These are products such as [bottle] caps and labels. The prices of these products has also increased on the world stock market due to [the price of] oil.

“The main raw material of these products has been collected by large countries such as China since they are also used in recycling, so the market has contracted.

“The price of the raw materials has increased. We were buying them at $1,250 per tonne, now it has increased to $2,750. . . When all these factors are combined, this caused an increase [in the consumer price of bottled water] of 15 to 20 percent. We did not want to make this increase, but the sector cannot continue if we do not produce.”